


No Way To Live

by walkingwookie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: One Shot, Short One Shot, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, let the past die, only someone can't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-06-08 01:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15232047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkingwookie/pseuds/walkingwookie
Summary: Ben Solo faces Rey's past when he takes a trip to Jakku. He finds himself face to face with her wall of tick marks, struggling to let the past die...





	No Way To Live

Ben doesn’t know how, but he finds himself standing on Jakku.

The heat of the sun brutally beats down on him. Its unforgiving rays force beads of sweat to creep their way down Ben’s back, making his skin tingle beneath his multitude of black layers.

A gentle breeze whips over the tops of sand dunes, disrupting their stiff peaks. The disoriented sand reminds Ben of cold ocean waves breaking, their spray hanging above their watery peaks before inevitably rejoining the flow of the sea.

The masked knight turned Supreme Leader takes heavy, tired steps as he trudges through the sand. With every step, he feels like he’s grown farther from his destination instead of closer, but Ben ignores the ache in his legs and the dryness in his mouth as he lets his heart guide him to where he knows he’s meant to be.

Ben’s ship is still parked among the dust of what remains of Nimaa outpost. A single black object sitting miles behind him, hidden behind multiple sand dunes and layers of heat hanging low over the sand.

With every breath, Ben can still see the face of Unkar Plutt as he took _his_ very last breath. He can still feel the weight of his saber as he sliced the slaver in half. Ben can still hear Plutt’s cries for mercy as he convicted him of his crimes.

Ben crests a final sand dune as his eyes rest calmly on the broken AT-AT. Ben wishes he could drop his helmet and look upon Rey’s old home with his own eyes, but he knows that would be too dangerous a move given the times and savagery that exists on Jakku.

Ben continues his journey towards the rust-bucket. His legs move with new-found motivation despite being terribly dehydrated. Ben breaks through the layers of heat with his tired legs, the air looks wavy as it tries casting a mirage.

As Ben grows nearer the old home, he imagines what it would have been like to live here alone all those years. He imagines a little girl, slumped against the old walker, watching the peaceful sunset as she rests her tired and malnourished body after a long day of scavenging.

Ben finds his mind also thinking about how lonely Rey must’ve been all those years. He thinks about the family she waited forever for, the family that wasn’t farther than her own backyard, the family who would never come. Ben thinks about the family she’s currently with. It’s her chosen family but it’s wrong, she should be with him.

They’re one and the same, Rey and Ben. Is that why he’s here right now? Is that why Ben came to Jakku? So that he could connect more with Rey even though she shuts him out?

If he physically came to her once-home, she wouldn’t be able to stop him from seeing a part of her. Ben needed to feel Rey. He needed to feel something of hers, even if that means meeting the ghost of the girl she once was.

Ben approaches the home with uncertainty. He’s apprehensive about what he’ll find within the abandoned AT-AT.

 _Why are you so scared? It’s just a house; four rusted walls and a metal ceiling. No, it’s not just a house, it was a home. Rey’s home._ Ben constructs a fight with his own mind as he considers the hurricane of emotions within his mind.

Ben holds his breath as he removes his helmet. He’s standing within the hole in the wall, meant to be treated as a door to the old shelter.

Ben drops the heavy helmet on the floor; he stares at its burdensome presence where it sits on the floor.

It’s noticeably cooler within the shade of the house, which Ben couldn’t be more grateful for, but he finds himself putting off his first inevitable glance around the room.

Finally, after what feels like lightyears, Ben breaks his concentrated stare with the floor and gains the courage to glance around the room for the first time.

Surprisingly, it looks exactly like he’d seen it in her mind when they’d touched hands. Everything was undisturbed and unmistakably _hers_.

Ben’s eyes flit from object to object. Memory to memory.

Scavenged engine parts serve as a table near the door, a dirty bowl and plate still rest where Rey had left them.

A rebel doll sits on a shelf, a hammock hangs in the corner.

Ben’s eyes finally pause to rest on the old desert flower. Dry and dead, it still sits in its vase. Untouched and unsullied. The flower reminds Ben of his own desert girl. No, not his own, not anymore, not ever, but a desert girl he wishes could be his own.

Ben shrugs off his cape as he walks towards the flower. He reaches out to touch its delicate petals, but he hesitates. Why does he hesitate?

Something is holding him back, something is preventing him from feeling the flower. Ben blames it on the will of the Force but he respects it; Ben retracts his hand as he accepts the Force’s suggestion to resist his temptation.

Ben turns and feels himself being drawn towards something.

A blink of time goes by before Ben finds himself standing before a wall.

The monumental wall reads pain and longing. Thousands of ticks mark off days passed. Countless sunsets and sunrises spent alone, lost in forgotten memories. Waiting for people whose faces she couldn’t even remember.

Ben’s hand reaches out to feel the wall. He wants to feel the pain and the sorrow. Wants to feel the loneliness that was so familiar within himself for all those years, he wants to feel _something_.

Unlike the flower, Ben could touch the wall. His gloves trace over hundreds of tick marks, he sees pictures. Visions really. With every tick mark his hand traces over, Ben sees them being drawn.

A girl’s hand evolves into a woman’s hand with each passing tick, each rising sun, and every passing day.

Ben thinks of his own childhood. He spent some of it in the public eye while his parents worked to build the New Republic, but as he got older, his parents made the decision to send him off to Luke’s to train as a Jedi.

Ben carefully considers himself and the decisions he’s made to get to where he is now as he continues to look at the wall’s tick marks. He realizes that nothing was ever enough for him. He spent all his time chasing down a daydream, all his time living in a blur instead of appreciating what he had when he had it. Ben spent all his time focusing on what could’ve been or could be instead of focusing on who he had, and when he had them.

Ben steps back from the wall, his shoulders slump with inadequacy. Nothing he’s endured could possibly amount to the astronomical pain Rey had struggled with and the people she’d put up with.

_This is no way to live._

Ben repeats the same statement in his mind, over and over again. He finds himself drowning in the words.

The six words that plague the AT-AT infect his mind and tongue.  

“This is no way to live!” Ben rips his saber from his belt and ignites it. He finds his adrenaline pumping as he’s ready to destroy the past, _kill it if you have to,_ he reminds himself _._

Ben raises his saber above his head and prepares to strike the wall of memories haunted by ghosts.

“ _Let the past die.”_

The words hang heavily in the air causing Ben to hesitate. He’s spoken them before but this time, they came from somewhere foreign. Someone was speaking the words to him from across the stars.

“ _Let the past die, Ben.”_

Ben extinguishes his saber and tosses it aside. He slumps against the wall of ticks. Ben feels the heat of the day radiating through the metal layer. It calms him.

Ben takes deep breaths as a single tear slips down his cheek. It follows the trough of his scar until it drips off his chin towards the AT-AT’s dusty floor.

Ben watches the tear fall. It falls slowly, as though it’s being manipulated. For a second, he thinks it hangs in the air but of course he writes it off as delusion and dehydration.

“Let the past die…” Ben repeats. “the sun will set and another day will be gone. The pain of the day will go to bed with the birds as the past becomes irrelevant. It may be no way to live, but she did it.” Ben smiles, knowing he’s speaking these words to remind himself of the truth of the situation.

Ben rests in the AT-AT for a while longer before embarking on the trek back to his TIE Silencer.

Ben chooses to leave everything, but the wall ticks, untouched. Ben was a guest in Rey’s home and he was a guest to her memories.

Ben soars through the sky of Jakku, chasing the sunset before he leaves the planet behind for good.

Darkness conquers the day’s light as Ben finally lets the past die…

**Author's Note:**

> I saw someone's fan art on Tumblr that depicted Kylo Ren resting his hand on the wall of ticks in Rey's old AT-AT and I was inspired! I've had this fic idea written on a sticky note for a while now and am so glad I finally got it out of me! I think similar things have probably been written but it's okay, I just love writing! Let me know what you guys think and thank you for reading! <3


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